Tuesday, June 24, 2014

The Twilight Zone got a bit of a jump on the summer rerun
season by airing a repeat before its fifth and final season ended: “Steel” was
rebroadcast on 6/12/64, then “The Bewitchin’ Pool” closed out the season (and
the series) on 6/19/64. The reruns commenced the following week.

As previously reported, the hourlong
fourth season episodes would make a surprise comeback for the summer of 1965
but, for all intents and purposes, The
Twilight Zone’s network run ended with the repeat of “The Jeopardy Room” on
9/18/64… or did it end a week earlier, with the encore airing of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”? Accounts vary. Martin Grams Jr. (in his The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a
Television Classic) says “The Jeopardy Room” repeat was pre-empted, but
“Dan Hollis” over at the TZ Café indicates otherwise in his exhaustive rundown
of the network schedule. Who’s right? Perhaps the answer can be found only in….
well, you know.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

When I started this blog back in 2009, I didn’t have a game plan, or a blueprint, or even a vague idea of what it would ultimately look like. It wasn’t my intent to review, critique or rate each episode, as that had already been done (and continues to be done to this day); rather, the blog was intended to chronicle my re-exploration of the series as each episode celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its original broadcast. My initial intent was to post a quick entry every week, a kind of pre-viewing announcement, and then maybe post some thoughts the next day if I felt inclined. I wasn’t writing it for an audience; it was just something for me to track my progress, and maybe record some memories of how the show had impacted my life.

As those of you who have been with me these last five
years can attest, the blog sort of mutated as it went along. I started writing
more about the specifics of each episode and, before long, a process of
formalization slowly, almost insidiously, worked its way into the proceedings.
By the end of the first season, the blog was starting to feel a bit like a
glorified episode guide. I still wasn’t rating the episodes, but I was
definitely critiquing them.

The second and third seasons brought more rigid
formatting; I also found myself increasingly willing to spoil the plot twists.
By the fourth season, I was constructing each episode spotlight from a fixed template:
introduction, spoiler-filled synopsis, thoughts and musings, cast, music and soundtrack
information, and a wrap-up at the end. This approach continued through the
fifth and final season and, as I look back over these last five years, it seems
that everything I intended this blog not
to be somehow came to pass anyway.

But you know what? Maybe it’s not such a bad thing.
I’m pretty proud of this beast, and not just because I somehow made it to the
end. This blog possesses an identity that sets it apart; nobody’s gonna confuse
it with the other TZ blogs out there.*
And even if it’s ultimately just another episode guide/review blog, blipping
feebly in the vast ocean of the internet, I think it’s a pretty cool one.
However, if that’s indeed what this blog is… well, that means that my work here
is most certainly not done.

Allow me to direct your attention to my other blog, My Life in the Glow of The Outer Limits, which launched in earnest last fall.
Given this blog’s lack of uniformity over the years, it was vitally important
to me that my Outer Limits effort arrive on the scene fully formed. When viewed
in its totality (so far, anyway; it’s still got another year to go), it’s
definitely much more cohesive than this much longer-toothed blog. I’m a bit
OCD, so yeah, it bugs me. But the lack of organizational or cosmetic
standardization doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that my early
episode spotlights were so damned sparse and cursory.

So: my first order of business will be to revisit
season one in its entirety. My initial inclination is to spotlight each episode
on its 55th anniversary… but we’ll see. I’ll still be doing the
Outer Limits blog until halfway through January, and doing both simultaneously
for nine months straight proved to be really tough. So I dunno, we’ll see (I’m
hoping to use these summer months to get ahead). I’m not sure how all this will play out. Do I
write entirely new entries, supplanting the originals? Do I keep the originals,
but reformat them and incorporate the new content? Or do I keep the new entries separate from the
old, and tether them across the ether with hyperlinks? Yeah, that might be
best. But then again….

I imagine the new spotlights will look much like
season five has looked, retaining the most recent stylistic change (which
evolved throughout January and was finalized with, of all things, “Black Leather Jackets.” It was at this point that this blog more or less mirrored its
Outer Limits sibling, with much
larger pictures and expanded cast connections); however, I do have a couple of
new ideas that I might play with as well. I’m also toying with the possibility
of reformatting the other seasons to match (at least approximately), but I
probably won’t add new content…. or will I? I’m very interested (okay,
obsessed) with the home video histories of both series; this is definitely
apparent in my Outer Limits blog,
where I chronicle the VHS, LaserDisc and DVD releases. The Twilight Zone has a more complex home video history, which I’ve
always wanted to explore more in these pages, so if I go down this road, I’ll add
a “Home Video” section to all 156 episode entries. Oh, and I should probably add the cue sheets to every episode spotlight that currently lacks them, for you obsessive music fans out there. And the screencaps for the first two seasons are only DVD-resolution, so those will need to be replaced. Y’now, the further I get
into this, the more I realize that I’ll be working on this blog for years to come.

It’s funny: as I slogged my way through the show’s
fifth and final season, I found myself growing increasingly weary of the whole
endeavor (both the blog and, to be perfectly frank, the series in general).
Since wrapping up the first season of The
Outer Limits a month ago, I’ve experienced something of a renewed interest
in All Things Twilight Zone, and a corresponding (and unexpected) excitement
about continuing on with the blog. Call it the "second honeymoon" phase of our
relationship, which is to say: I’m not done with the old girl quite yet.

* A few of those blogs/sites are:

Exploring The Twilight Zone is a joint effort by Twitch Film and Film School Rejects, which stopped abruptly at “Stopover in a Quiet
Town” in January 2012. That’s right, they stopped six episodes from the end.

The Onion’s A.V. Club just started on season
five within the last couple of weeks. They tackle two episodes per week, so
they oughta be done before too long.

Andrew Ramage’s The Twilight Zone Museum looks at each episode and offers what he calls “critical commentary.” He relies a bit too heavily on dialogue excerpts for my tastes but, as near as I can tell, he was the first of us to make it through all 156 episodes (online, anyway).

The Twilight Zone Vortex is easily the best of the bunch, and I daresay it’s got my humble
efforts more or less beat. It's a bit early to call it (they're only partway through season two as of this writing), but I think they'll ultimately take the crown. I'm not jealous in the least, because they deserve it.

Friday, June 20, 2014

Well, what can I say about the worst season of my all-time
favorite television series? That’s right, kids, I said worst. Maybe I should take a moment to duck and cover, to avoid the
inevitable brickbats and flames headed my way.

I’m speaking from a mostly statistical standpoint. While I’ve
eschewed rating the episodes, I still have a general reference system,
comprised of three categories: good-to-excellent, mediocre, and lousy (not
exactly scientific, I’ll grant you). The stats for Season 5 are as follows:

Season 5 is made up of 36 episodes, which means that only 63.89%
of the season falls under the good-to-excellent category. That’s a D, folks.
And honestly, it could’ve been worse: “The 7th Is Made up of Phantoms” and “You Drive” both had me on the fence, but they ended up being
just decent enough to escape the mediocre label (conversely, "Ninety Years without Slumbering" is just disappointing enough to earn it).

But here’s the surprising thing: before now, I hadn’t watched most
of the fifth season in probably 20 years. Overall, I’d say most of the episodes
were actually better than I’d remembered, so... I dunno, maybe I’m softening up in my old
age. It’s still the weakest season, and it still pales quite painfully when
held up against the brilliance of season one, but it’s not terrible. A D grade,
after all, is still passing.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Fifty years ago tonight, a television
legend came to an end as The Twilight
Zone aired its 156th and final episode. Sadly, the series ended with a soft, weak
whimper instead of going out with a powerful, brilliant bang.

The Sharewoods are an unhappy bunch.
Gil and Gloria have two modes of interaction: passive aggression and just plain
aggression, and siblings Sport and Jeb are constantly caught in the crossfire.
One day a young boy named Whit appears out of nowhere in their swimming pool
and invites them to come with him. They dive in after him, and emerge in a
lake.

There’s a charming cottage on the
lake’s shore, and several children are playing in the yard. Whitt introduces Sport
and Jeb to Aunt T, an elderly woman who explains that her home is a sanctuary
of sorts for sad and neglected children. Sport insists that they aren’t
neglected; that their parents do in fact love them despite their fighting. Aunt
T tells them that they should go home if that's the case.

The next day, Gloria angrily orders Sport
to find her brother (who is nowhere to be found), so that all four can have a
family meeting. Sport returns to Aunt T’s home and finds Jeb there, who refuses
to leave. Sport lies and tells him that things will be different now, that
their parents have promised not to fight anymore, and that they’ll be a happy
family at last. Jeb reluctantly goes home with her, on the understanding that
they can probably never return to Aunt T’s place.

Gil and Gloria tell Sport and Jeb that
they are getting a divorce, and that the kids can choose which parent they want
to live with. Sport balks, and she and Jeb return to the pool, calling out for
Aunt T to help them. They swim toward the bottom, prompting Gil to in after them... but he comes up empty. The
kids are gone.

.

Earl
Hamner Jr.’s “The Bewitchin’ Pool” (that’s right, the
series finale wasn’t even written by Rod Serling) isn’t necessarily terrible…
it’s just nothing special. Drop it in the middle of the third season and I
wouldn’t bat an eye. But here, at the very end, it leaves me wanting… pretty
badly, in fact. It’s yet another of Hamner’s down-home “city folk are wicked
and country folk are good” efforts which, as a lifelong city-dweller, I find a
bit offensive.

Some of Mary Badham’s dialogue is
regrettably dubbed by June Foray, who provided the voice of Talky Tina earlier
this season in “Living Doll” (I can’t help but wish she said “My name is Sport Sharewood,
and I don’t think I like you” at some point in the episode, preferably to her
asshole parents), as Badham’s southern accent was reportedly thick enough to
make her semi-unintelligible. The dub job is obvious and, frankly, a bit
confusing since all of Badham’s dialogue in the Aunt T segments --- which
wasn’t replaced --- sounds fine. History also cites “backlot noise” as an
additional culprit, so I dunno. In any case, the episode’s post-production took
longer than anticipated and, rather than airing in March as originally planned,
it was held back until the very end of the season. So at least we know why such
a limp offering ended up being the series finale.

Leave it to The Twilight Zone to throw us a curve ball in the final play of the
final game. The entire prologue segment isn’t a prologue at all; it’s what we
generally call a “teaser” over on my Outer
Limits blog, which means it’s a scene from the episode shown out of order
and out of context, intended to (wait for it) tease the viewer. The Outer Limits used this practice for
most of its first season (at ABC’s behest) in order to show the audience the
alien/monster of the week as fast as possible. “The Bewitchin’ Pool” has no
such beasts to speak of, so I’m guessing the episode ran several minutes short
(in addition to the sound problems detailed above), necessitating some creative
editing. We do get the customary Serling intro at the end of it, but we don’t
get the customary whip pan leading into it; rather, Serling’s face emerges from
the swirling waters of the Sharewood clan’s swimming pool, which is admittedly
a cool effect, hearkening back to the imaginative and unexpected Serling
appearances in the show’s second and third seasons.

Rod
Swirling?

A further indication that the teaser
wasn’t part of the original plan can be found at the start of act one, where we
hear another chunk of Serling narration (this is the only time in the entire
series we hear him during the first act). I’m guessing (I don’t have the
script, so guessing is all I can do) that the teaser narration was written at
some later time after principal photography had wrapped.

I find myself a a bit hung up on the concept of Aunt T’s
Refuge for Neglected Tykes; specifically, what’s the long-term plan? Does she
return them to the real world when they reach the age of majority, after she’s
raised ‘em up right 'n all? Aunt T explains to Jeb and Whitt that “all children
need chores” to teach them responsibility and so forth, so this certainly seems
possible. However, I get a very strong Neverland vibe from the whole thing,
which might keep the kids young forever. So I dunno.

I’m reminded of the X-files episode “Closure,” in which the
mystery of FBI Agent Fox Mulder’s missing sister is finally (sort of) solved:
it turns out she was taken by “The Walk-Ins,” spectral beings who saved her
from imminent harm and relocated her to an ethereal paradise for lost children. Is Aunt T such a being? Is Samantha Mulder with her now???

.

THE
MUSIC

“The Bewitchin’ Pool” is stock-scored
with selections from the CBS Music Library, a few of which are vaguely familiar
(meaning they probably appeared in other episodes). Two cues of note are “Hope" and "Act Ending"by
Bernard Herrmann, both from his
sublime Walt Whitman Suite. I’m
really glad that ol’ Bennie, who scored the series pilot “Where Is Everybody?,”
is heard one more time in the series closer; it’s a nice musical bookend of
sorts. If you'd like to obtain said Walt Whitman Suite, you can find on Bernard Herrmann at CBS, Volume 2: American Gothic from Prometheus Records.

.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Mary Badham stars as Sport Sharewood in her only Twilight Zone appearance. Badham’s résumé is pretty sparse, but she
did play Scout Finch (who is more or less a younger version of Sport) in 1962’s wonderful adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, so color me
impressed as hell.

The cherubic and adorable Jeb Sharewood is played by Tim Stafford, who now works under the name Jeffrey Byron. I couldn’t find any of the usual genre connections
for him; however, he did appear on The
Fugitive in 1964 (“Tiger Left, Tiger Right"; below), my favorite non-genre series
of that time. More recently, he administered the Kobayashi Maru Scenario test
in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek
reboot.

Aunt T is played by Georgia
Simmons in her sole Twilight Zone
excursion. Simmons has no other genre credits to speak of, but she did appear
in Fellini’s 8½, so at least she did
something worthwhile with her career (“The Bewitchin’ Pool” sure as hell ain’t
it).

The Huck Finn-ish Whitt is played by Kim Hector, who only worked as an actor for six short years. In
that brief amount of time, he managed to score this TZ gig and an Outer Limits
(he played the afflicted child Johnny Subiron in “The Inheritors”)…. but his most
impressive credit came with his role as Cecil Jacobs in 1962’s To Kill a
Mockingbird, so he already knew Mary Badham when he reported to the TZ set.

Kim Hector (right) squares off against Mary Badham.

If Dee Hartford (Gloria
Sharewood) looks familiar, it may be because she also appeared on The Outer Limits (“The Invisibles,” which
starred TZ alums Don Gordon and George MacReady). Hartford
also showed up on The Alfred Hitchcock
Hour (“Day of Reckoning”) and Batman
(she played Miss Iceland in “Green Ice”/”Deep Freeze”). Is she a TZ Babe? I’d
say yes, despite her bitchy demeanor here.

Dee Hartford (left) with TZ alum Don Gordon.

The résumé of Tod Andrews
(Gil Sharewood) doesn’t contain any of the usual genre connections; however, he
did appear as “Skipper” in 1970’s Beneath
the Planet of the Apes, so there’s a very tenuous Rod Serling connection
(since Serling worked on the screenplay for 1968’s original Planet of the Apes. Don’t look at me
that way; I said it was tenuous). Andrews also starred in 1957’s From Hell It Came which, despite a
promising title, concerns a wrongfully-executed man who is reincarnated… as an
ambulatory tree stump monster.

.

The
Twilight Zone served many functions during its
five-year life span. It meted out cosmic justice by punishing the guilty, and
allowed second chances to those deserving of them. It enlightened those who’d
lost their way, and it provided escape for those desperate enough to seek it
out. As its final noble act, it provided a haven for neglected children which,
as a parent, I can definitely appreciate. But damn it, I wish the episode
surrounding that promising theme was better. “The Bewitchin’ Pool,” taken
strictly on its own, is mediocre at best. As the final Twilight Zone episode ever, it’s disappointing and anticlimactic.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Looks like Image Entertainment is releasing yet another DVD compilation on July 1st (*yawn*). I already own the entire series on both DVD and Blu-ray, and if I didn't, I could watch it on Hulu (all five seasons) or Netflix (everything except season four as of this writing), so this kind of announcement doesn't excite me in the least. The only reason I'm mentioning it is because, as far as I know, it's the first item to commemorate the series' upcoming 55th anniversary, which falls on October 2nd.

Having said that, it does contain a pretty great selection of episodes. The 2-disc set features the following:

I have no argument with the selection: all 17 episodes are top notch (well, I'm not exactly fond of "Time Enough at Last," but I can't deny its iconic status). There are of course a few I'd swap out (I'd probably trade "The Masks" for "Third from the Sun," for example), but this is a really solid compilation. I guess it's a great (and inexpensive; Amazon's pre-order price is $18.99) way to introduce new viewers to the series. The fact that it's a DVD-only compilation is a bit troubling, however. There's simply no excuse in this day and age to restrict content ---- particularly content that has already been remastered in high definition --- to lowly standard-def. Given the number of times Image has milked the Twilight Zone cow, this is more than a bit disappointing.

Monday, June 2, 2014

I received Bif Bang Pow!’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet diorama as a birthday gift from my good
buddy Bill Huelbig about six months ago. I took pictures of it for my intended
spotlight… which never quite happened. I have no excuse for this item slipping
through the proverbial cracks, other than the fact that writing two blogs for eight months straight has
been a bit overwhelming. I’ll attempt to rectify this oversight now.

When the first
“Classic Moments” diorama (a San Diego Comic Con exclusive based on “The Invaders”) was
announced, one of my initial reservations concerned the size: the promotional
pictures made it seem big enough to be a big unwieldy for my purposes (never
mind that the damned dimensions were readily available: 6.5” deep x 5.0” wide x
3.5” tall). I also wasn’t a fan of the sculpt (I think eliminating the Agnes
Moorehead character entirely and just featuring the Invader and his flying
saucer would’ve been way better). Another reservation was the price: $24.99
plus shipping, which seemed somehow unreasonable (however, I had no context to
justify this conclusion). Further, I had
grown a bit disenchanted with BBP’s offerings in general, especially since
their action figure line had essentially screeched to a halt (see here for the
sad tale). When the second diorama (based on “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”) was
announced, I found myself quite underwhelmed, and decided at that point to
avoid the dioramas completely.

I did
experience a bit of regret when the third diorama was announced (from “Eye of the Beholder”), which looked really impressive. But by then the “Invaders”
diorama had sold out, and finances prohibited me from paying aftermarket prices
(also, the completist in me couldn’t bear to buy some but not all of them), so
I stuck to my guns and didn’t bite.

And then---
good ol’ Bill sent me the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” diorama for my birthday,
and all bets were abruptly off.

First off, the
box is approximately the same size as those that house BBP’s TZ bobble heads,
but the actual item itself is much smaller (6.5” wide x 4.5” long x 2.5” tall; again,
having never bothered to check the specs, I was expecting it to be quite a bit bigger).
I found the compactness quite appealing, and my original (unfounded) unwieldiness
argument was immediately shattered. Plus---- well, the damned thing ended up
being quite cool in general, so my original underwhelmed reaction was
supplanted as well.

Have a look, kids.

If I have a
complaint, it’s the fact that the Gremlin is painted the same gray as the
plane, which makes him (it?) really hard to see. Just a few brushstrokes of a darker
gray would’ve made a big difference (I’m certainly not expecting much detail at
this scale). Otherwise---- a really solid piece. After my initial blasé
reaction, I’m quite happy to wholeheartedly recommend it. Thanks Bill!

So now the
inevitable question arises: what about those other two dioramas? The “Eye of the Beholder” diorama (which is still available for $29.99 plus shipping; I'm not sure why the price point is so much higher) is
definitely something I want to pick up at some point. It appears that perhaps
the line will stop at three (it’s been over a year, and a fourth diorama still
hasn’t been announced), so I suppose I can swallow the aftermarket price of the
“Invaders” diorama (I’ve still got some issues with the sculpting but, given the
diminutive scale, it may be much less problematic) for completion’s sake.